CORE 1010
Seminar
offerings
Department of Rhetoric and Composition
Academy of Liberal Arts
The American University in Cairo
Course Titles
1. Creative Expressions of Resistance
2. How do we know what's true?
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
Imagining Exile
Of Heroes and Demons
Filming Difference: Perceptions of of Nations, Borders, Race and
Identity
Civic Engagement, Public Leadership and the Right to be Human
A Beautiful Mind: 21st Century Learning
Advertology
Exploring the Big Questions
Who Am I?
Imagined Worlds: Utopias and Dystopias
Vision Machines: The Story of Inventions and Everyday Life
“Creative Expressions of
Resistance”
What is the role of the artist in the
face of oppression? How can
artistic expression be itself a form
of resistance? In this course we
will reflect on creative responses
to oppression and explore various
ways individuals and societies
have expressed resistance to
power.
Artistic expressions such as
poetry, music, visual art, and
comics will be studied in
conjunction with their political and
cultural groundings.
“Art of Resistance.” Logo. Web. 24 May 2013.
Main Texts
Books:
Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi. Pantheon, 2003.
Films:
Granito: How to Nail a Dictator Dir. Pamela Yates, 2005.
Persepolis. Dir. Marjane Satrapi, 2007.
How to Start a Revolution, Dir. Ruardh Arrow, 2011.
Paradise Now, Dir. Hany Abu-Assade, 2005.
Plus many poems, music, short stories, visual art, articles, and political
cartoons.
Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis.Web. 24 May 2013.
Many of us have accepted that
the path to truth feels a lot like
this…
Or perhaps worse,
this…
Readings and Themes
Elizabeth Sherman “Science and Antiscience in America.”
“So what if science doesn’t inform the decisions we make as a country, a people, a
world? The answer is that people suffer.”
David Grann “Trial by Fire”
How did so many well-intentioned people get it so wrong?
Answers of Cognitive Science and Psychology
Daniel Schacter. “Building Memories: Encoding and Retrieving the Present and the
Past.”
K.C. Cole. “Seeing Things.”
Susan Engel. “Then and Now: Creating a Self Through the Past.”
Sarah Trenholm and Arthur Jensen. “Interpretive Competence.”
Roger Schank. “Understanding Other People’s Stories.”
Stanley Milgram: “Some Conditions on Obedience to Authority.”
Malcolm Gladwell, Blink.
Another case
Doubt, the film (or the play by John Patrick).
“Truth in dictionary.” Dreamstime.com. Web
Imagine the process of emigration from taking the decision
to encountering the new country and deciding whether to
become part of immigrant communities or whether to fully
integrate to negotiating an identity and visiting the homeland
once more.
Consider why people cross borders seeking new homelands
and how the experience of exile oscillates between
engagement and estrangement.
Main Texts
As well as a selection of academic articles, institutional
documents, stand-up comedy, film excerpts, performances
and podcasts,
Filming Difference: Perceptions
of Nations, Borders, Race and Identity
Selected Readings
Introduction to Documentary Film (Bill
Nichols, 2nd Edition) E-Book
Arab Cinema: History and Cultural Identity
(Viola Shafik) E-Book
Alfred Hitchcock: Frame by Frame The
Auteur
The Four Hundred Blows (Francois Truffaut)
1959
M (Fritz Lang) 1931
Metropolis (Fritz Lang) 1927
The Asphalt Jungle (John Huston) 1950
The Man with the Movie Camera (Dziga
Vertoz) 1929
Readings
Civic Engagement, Public Leadership
and the Right to be Human
✓ Connection between
human rights and the way
they are protected.
✓ Role citizens can and
should play.
✓ AUC’s potential for service
learning and student
leadership.
✓ CBL to determine and
evaluate how the notions of
leadership, citizenship and
democracy relate to
everyday life.
O How are human rights and social
justice the same and different?
O How can we evaluate civic
engagement programs?
O What is civic engagement and
how can it enhance social justice?
O What is leadership? Can it be
learned?
O What does service learning look
like elsewhere?
O Can liberal arts launch students
into a lifetime of civic engagement
?
“Let knowledge grow from more to more,.
But more of reverence in us dwell.”
Lord Alfred Tennyson (Poet Laureate)
“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be
those who cannot read and write, but those
who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”
Alvin Toffler (writer and futurist)
Readings mainly
from:
Who am I?
A practical and theoretical exploration of different
approaches to human consciousness and the self in the
sciences, psychology, philosophy, the arts, and religion.
Death
Coma
NDE’s
After-life
NeuroBiological:
Left-Right Brain
Cellular
Perception
Memory
Drugs
Automatic
Brain
Typology
SpiritualReligious
Meditation
Being Present
Psychology:
Sub-personalities
The Shadow
Self and Other
Selves:
Social Norms
Cultural Values/
Spiral Dynamics
The Human Quest: Exploring the
“Big Questions”
Weeks 1-4: Who am I?
How do we maintain our identities
in an age of globalization?
Weeks 5-9: Where do we come
from?
Why have some societies come to
dominate others?
Weeks 10-12: What does it mean to
be human?
What do the arts tell us about the
human condition?
Weeks 12-14: Where are we going?
What are some of the moral and
ethical issues facing humankind?
Doyle, D. (2006). Bedouin
Woman.
Readings
Poems by Leslie Marmon Silko, Naomi Shihab Nye, Scott
Momaday, and an Aztec poet.
Short stories: “This is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona”
by Sherman Alexie, “Corncobs” by Salwa Bakr, “The Last and
Final Continent” by Jhumpa Lahiri, “The Shell Collector” by
Anthony Doerr
Imagined Worlds: Utopias and Dystopias
From Plato’s Republic, to Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger
Games, literature is full of examples of imagined utopias
that promise harmony and happiness for their citizens...
but as the rules multiply to ensure their success, these
imagined utopias often turn into their very opposite:
dystopias…
O What are utopias and dystopias?
O Why do we desire to establish a paradise on earth?
O What can go wrong with this?
O Where is the line between the dream and the nightmare?
O How can the enchanted world help us to deal with the real world?
Vision Machines: The Story of
Inventions and Everyday Life
Module 1: Body
Module 2: Text
Leonardo da Vinci “Vitruvius Man” Creative Commons.
“Remington Portable Manual” Machines of Loving Grace.
Module 3: Image
Still from Frankenstein (James Whale, 1931).
Kenwood Electric Chef from RetroCake